


Jack's Clipboard

by DameRuth



Series: Bliss [11]
Category: Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Attempted Marriage, Fluff, Humor, Multi, Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-01
Updated: 2020-06-01
Packaged: 2021-03-03 00:01:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 8
Words: 5,348
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24495394
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DameRuth/pseuds/DameRuth
Summary: Three people, two species, one wedding -- sounds simple, right? Not necessarily; just ask Jack. He's got a clipboard full of possibilites, but will any of them work? AU Rose/Jack/Nine OT3, from the Bliss!verse, post-"Different". (Author self-rating of PG, for mild rudeness.)[Continuing the Teaspoon transfer - original posting dates 2007.06.08-2008.12.06.]
Relationships: Ninth Doctor/Jack Harkness/Rose Tyler
Series: Bliss [11]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/14078
Kudos: 23





	1. Prologue

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The setup . . . to be updated as the bunnies bite. ;)

“So,” Jack asked, “are we really gonna go through with this wedding thing?”  
  
“Mum wants it,” Rose pointed out.  
  
That earned a derisive rumble from the Doctor, who was lying between them. The three of them were curled up in bed, where it seemed most of the major decision-making conversations ended up happening, anymore. They were sprawled in a confused but comfortable tangle, limbs variously entwined, their wide-open empathic link leading to a pleasantly fuzzy blurring-together of emotional states.  
  
“Like a few words and a scrap of paper would make any difference to _this_ ,” the Doctor commented, sending a ripple of sensation running through the link, like flicking a string on a musical instrument. Rose and Jack closed their eyes in unison, inhaling in appreciation, and sending echoes back to the Doctor, who sighed contentedly.  
  
Rose continued after a moment, thoughtfully. “For as long as I can remember, Mum’s been talkin’ about my wedding. Not pressurin’, but . . . she wants to see me settled. It was hard on her, losin’ Dad, and she wants better for me.” A faint ripple of melancholy silver-grey rippled through the link at the thought of Pete Tyler, which she caught quickly, to keep it from ruining the relaxed mood they shared.  
  
Jack squeezed her hand, and the Doctor tightened his arm around her shoulders momentarily.  
  
“Anyway,” she went on, “I think, to her, it’d mean she’s done her job — seen me grown up an' on my own. I’d like to do it, for her. It’s not like it’d change anythin,” she said with sly amusement, shooting the Doctor’s argument back at him (he grumphed in response), “and, I dunno — could be fun . . .”  
  
“Here’s a thought,” Jack supplied, sounding lazy and speculative. “We pick up three matching rings or whatever somewhere, show up wearing ‘em, and say we’ve done the deed . . .”  
  
“Now that’s an idea,” the Doctor commented.  
  
“Oi! You sayin’ we should lie to my _mum_?” Rose asked, with an indignation that was only partly humorous.  
  
Jack sent a pulse of, ( _Yes/problem?_ ) down the link -- the equivalent of a mental shrug, completely devoid of irony.  
  
“Works for me,” the Doctor said out loud.  
  
“No. No way,” Rose said, firmly, her thoughts going steely-blue. “If we do it, we do it for real. Besides,” she added, practically, softening to a gentler color, “Mum wants to be there for it, in person.”  
  
A somewhat disconcerted pause . . . then a sigh of shared acquiescence from the others.  
  
“Well, the New Tellurians are open about multiple marriages,” Jack commented after a moment’s thought. “And they’ve got some pretty spiffy churches . . .”  
  
“No,” the Doctor said immediately. “No churches.”  
  
That earned him a spark of surprise from both companions.  
  
“If I’m takin’ an oath, ‘specially about somethin’ like this, I’m not takin’ it on terms I don’t believe in,” the Doctor clarified out loud, his emotions a solid, adamant wall backing the words.  
  
Both Rose and Jack knew the Doctor embraced a particularly hard-edged form of agnosticism (“I don’t know, and neither do you, s' shut up, already”), but they’d never heard anything quite of the sort from him.  
  
“If you don’t believe in it,” Jack said, “what’s the problem?”  
  
"It’s disrespectful, for starters,” the Doctor told him, firmly, “and when I give my word, I believe in _that_. I won’t go dilutin’ it.”  
  
“Hm,” Jack said after a moment. “Three people, civil ceremony -- but for-real and binding -- and something suitable for Rose’s mum . . . “ his eyes narrowed, and Rose and the Doctor could both feel his mind working, turning over possibilities, intrigued by the challenge. Jack liked a good puzzle.  
  
“Library’s yours,” the Doctor suggested, shading towards sleepiness, and more than willing to hand off that particular piece of research.  
  
Rose, also getting sleepy, sent a pretty and encouraging wash of colors in Jack’s direction.  
  
“Tomorrow, then,” Jack told them, yawning before snuggling down a little more closely, “I’ll find us a wedding. I like a good party.”  



	2. First Results

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Complications begin to arise . . .

The Doctor and Rose were sitting on the deck grating in the control room while he showed her how to take apart and clean a temporal stabilizer, when Jack wandered in. He was holding a coffee cup in one hand, a clipboard in the other, and was frowning.  
  
“How’s it goin’?” Rose asked, looking up from the hydraulic tubing she was holding.  
  
Jack was silent for a moment, taking a thoughtful sip of coffee. Then he announced, “This may be harder than I thought.”  
  
“Do tell,” the Doctor said, in the tone of voice of someone who isn’t particularly interested.  
  
Rose sent a light mental slap at him, since her hands were full, but the Doctor ducked it without even having to divert his attention from the bolt he was coaxing into place.  
  
“If it was up to me, I’d just head back to the fifty-first century, around where I grew up. Only catch is, I don’t think Jackie’d care for the ceremony.”  
  
“Why not?” Rose asked, blowing air up to try and dislodge a strand of hair from her nose without resorting to her grease-covered hands.  
  
“Well, for starters, the three of us would have to be naked . . .”  
  
“ _What?_ ” Rose yelped.  
  
“Shows you aren’t hiding anything. And if you aren’t serious enough to strip down in public, you can’t be serious enough to get married,” Jack told her, as if it was the most obvious thing in the world. “Seems reasonable enough. I still don’t see why anyone would need to get dressed _up_ to get married. But, anyway, I don’t think Jackie’d be all that thrilled for her darling daughter to be starkers in front of all the witnesses, so that’s out . . .”  
  
“I wouldn’t be thrilled, either,” Rose grumbled under her breath, but Jack was already continuing.  
  
“The New Tellurians or the Thrice-Reformed Episcopalians would be a good bet, but they’re out, for the religious content . . .”  
  
The Doctor reached for another bolt and sent a nonverbal _oomph!,_ of agreement down the link at that.  
  
“And after that . . . it gets weird. The Nova Brenians would let us get married, but only if one of us was officially listed as a concubine . . .” that earned a negative mental response from both of the others, even as they struggled to realign the hydraulic pump properly in the stabilizer, too distracted for words. “Yeah, I know. The L’nerr are okay with three-person marriages, but only within one species, and they require an onsite genetic test to prove it. So, that’s out.  
  
“If we were two women and a man, we could practically take our pick — but for some reason, nobody much cares for two men and one woman.  
  
“There are a couple of polyandry cultures, but they expect the men to be brothers, and again, they do a genetic test.  
  
“There are levirate cultures, but me’n the Doc’d need to be brothers, again, and one of us’d have to die — permanently — before the other’d count as a full husband.  
  
“On Bellerophon Six, the Doc and I could both marry Rose, but we couldn’t marry _each other_ , and we’d get burned at the stake if they thought the two of us were anything but really good friends.  
  
“The Krenth would let us marry — if we were all the same gender. Odd-numbered marriages have the be within one gender, mixed gender marriages need to be even numbers . ..”  
  
“What?!” Rose said, distracted enough to look up. “Why?”  
  
“I think it’s so nobody feels left out. Dunno — I’m just reporting the customs, not makin’ ‘em up . . .”  
  
“Oi!” the Doctor said, redirecting Rose’s attention to the work at hand, where he was currently soldering in some replacement wires.  
  
“Anyway,” Jack continued, “so far I’ve only found one place we could get married that’s at all close to what we need . . .”  
  
A ( _Yes . . .?,_ ) from, the Doctor, who was holding the sonic screwdriver in his mouth at the moment, and a wash of inquisitive indigo from Rose.  
  
Jack pulled in a deep breath. “Crazy Dave’s Wedding Emporium, on New Hong Kong Station. If we hit it at a time before ol’ Dave was under governmental investigation for fraud, it’d even be legally binding in ten star systems.” He began quoting, “’We marry anyone and anything — household appliances our specialty . . .’”  
  
( _No!_ )  
  
Jack couldn’t even separate Rose and the Doctor’s “voices” within that response, they were in such perfect unison.  
  
“Aw, c’mon,” he said, laughing. “They even have a group discount . . . “  
  
( _NO!_ )  
  
“We could have an Elvis impersonator officiate . . .”  
  
( _NOT ON YOUR LIFE, JACK HARKNESS!_ )  
  
“Well, anyway, that’s what I’ve found so far.”  
  
“Sounds like you’ll have to keep lookin’, then,” the Doctor told him, absently, starting the long and frustrating process of realigning the stabilizer housing.  
  
Jack looked at Rose and the Doctor — covered in grease, tired and irritated from working on one of the most dirty, physically-demanding tasks in timeship maintenance, and smirked to himself . . . though he was careful to keep that response from traveling down the link.  
  
“Guess so,” he said. “Think I’ll head back to the Library and do that.”  
  
Spinning the clipboard lightly in one happily grease-free hand, he made for the corridor, whistling a fragment of Crazy Dave’s Wedding Processional (TM).  



	3. No Goats

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> All I can say about this one is . . . sorry!

Jack found Rose and the Doctor having tea in the galley, and hooked a chair over with one foot so he could join them at the small table.  
  
“Guess what?” he asked, smugly, holding up the clipboard that was now his near-constant companion. He had a writing stylus tucked behind his ear, another new habit of his. “I think I’ve found our ceremony.”  
  
The others raised their eyebrows at him, waiting to hear more.  
  
“Right.” Jack began reading from his clipboard. “It’s a place called Nevendor, they allow multiple weddings — any and all genders — don’t care about cross-species issues, s’long as everyone getting married is sentient, and actually have fairly nice wedding clothes.” He passed a printout to Rose, who began nodding guarded approval. “Assuming you need clothes,” he added, fifty-first century prejudices creeping in for a moment. Then he continued.  
  
“And Rose, you’ll love this — there’s even a part for the bride’s mother in the ceremony. Jackie would be the Goat-Holder . . .”  
  
“The which?” Rose asked, startled and confused.  
  
“Huh? No, no witches in this ceremony,” Jack replied mishearing her. “The Goat-Holder. Nevendor’s an agricultural place, so the bride’s family supplies a goat for the wedding — kind of a dowry thing.”  
  
“We don’t have a goat,” Rose pointed out.  
  
“We can get one. Shush. Let me finish. Anyway, the bride’s mom holds the goat on a leash while the Justicar reads the ceremony — which is nice and short, by the way.”  
  
“Sounds good so far,” the Doctor hazarded, clearly in favor of brevity.  
  
“We all exchange rings, then the Goat-Holder leads the goat up front, the Justicar cuts its throat and anoints the three of us with the blood — just a little dab on the forehead — then they fire up the barbecue, we eat the goat, and it’s a done deal.”  
  
Jack stopped reading, and looked hopefully up at Rose. “D’you think your mom would go for it?” he asked.  
  
Rose simply stared at him for a moment, her portion of the empathic link emitting a blank white expanse of complete shock.  
  
Sixty seconds later, Jack was wandering forlornly down the corridor, back towards the Library, with Rose’s verbal response still ringing in his ears. Even over the ringing, he could hear the Doctor in the galley, laughing his way toward respiratory bypass. Rose was flaring flame-orange at him, trying to get him to stop, without much success.  
  
Jack pulled the stylus from behind his ear and drew a large and decisive “X” through Nevendor’s name on his list. As an afterthought, he scribbled “no goats” in the margin of the paper.  
  
“Dammit,” he sighed, tapping the non-business end of the stylus against his teeth as he walked. “I really thought that one was gonna work . . .”  



	4. Uplifting

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A certain article of clothing is a source of running gags for me any some of my friends, so it's not surprising Rose and Jack get some amusement out of it, too . . .

Her morning shower completed, Rose stepped out of the bathroom and into the bedroom, squeezing her hair with a towel.  
  
The Doctor was holding up a pair of jumpers and scowling at them, making his usual difficult morning decision (between maroon and navy blue, today). Considering it was the only thing that varied about his wardrobe, he put an awful lot of thought into it, Rose felt. Jack was sitting cross-legged on the bed, not yet dressed, and scowling at his clipboard.  
  
Rose decided to dress as quickly as possible and bolt for the galley to start tea, thus avoiding being asked her opinion about either jumper colors or hypothetical weddings, neither of which she felt up to discussing at the moment.  
  
She didn’t quite make it. She was just zipping up her jeans when Jack began, without preamble, “Anyway . . .”  
  
Rose sighed, captured, and plunked down on the edge of the bed to listen. The Doctor spared Jack an annoyed glance, and then went back to contemplating matters of high fashion.  
  
“The Hebrides system,” Jack announced. “Civil service, no public nudity, no species issues, no gender or poly issues, no goats — or sheep, either, which was a pleasant surprise, given the name of the place. Nothing that should upset Jackie — or anyone else,” he added, dryly, for the benefit of the audience. “Nice traditional wedding clothes; a gown for Rose, and kilts for me and the Doc . . .”  
  
“That’s out, then,” the Doctor told him, deciding on the navy blue jumper, and tossing the maroon one back in the drawer.  
  
“What, because you’d have to wear a _kilt_?” Jack asked, incredulous. “One article of clothing?”  
  
“’M not wearin’ a skirt in public,” the Doctor declared, his voice briefly muffled by the jumper going over his head.  
  
Jack groaned. “Of all the times to get hung up on a gender stereotype . . . C’mon, the Scots’ve been wearing kilts since Old Earth, and I’ve never heard anyone insult their testosterone levels — at least to their faces. Probably has something to do with those humungous swords they love so much . . .” Jack brightened. “If we got you a claymore to wear for the ceremony, would you do it then?”  
  
The Doctor glared. “This isn’t about compensatin,’ Captain.”  
  
Rose couldn’t help chuckling, “Yeah, that’s sure what it’d look like . . . But, I dunno, I like kilts. They let men show off a little.”  
  
“Yeah,” Jack commented, deadpan. “Especially in a high wind.”  
  
“I meant their _legs_ ,” Rose said, laughing in earnest now. “Honestly, you and your dirty mind . . .” she trailed off, then, out of nowhere, suddenly convulsed with laughter.  
  
She’d had some image occur to her, Jack could tell, but their empathic link didn’t work in such a way that he could “see” what it was. ( _Share!_ ) he prodded at her, nonverbally, grinning.  
  
Rose caught her breath and wiped her eyes. “I just got a picture of him . . .” she waved a hand blindly in the Doctor’s direction, “. . . in a kilt, doin’ the Marilyn Monroe thing over an air vent . . .” She lost control and began laughing again, hard enough to keel over sideways on the bed, radiating helpless waves of pink and gold amusement.  
  
Jack keeled over next to her, laughing every bit as hard.  
  
The Doctor, unamused, yanked on his boots and grabbed his coat from its hook. “Oh, yeah, hilarious,” he commented.  
  
“Wearin’ a kilt could be an upliftin’ experience . . .” Rose said from where she lay.  
  
“If you’re lucky, anyway,” Jack interjected.  
  
“ . . . you really should give it a twirl . . .” Rose continued.  
  
“ . . . especially at high speed . . .” Jack gasped.  
  
“Right,” the Doctor told them from the doorway. “When you two are over your fascination with ethnic clothin,’ I’ll be in the control room, getting’ ready to save the world or some such. Feel free to join in . . .”  
  
“Why do Scotsmen wear kilts?” Rose was saying, ignoring him.  
  
“Easier to run with your kilt up than your pants down,” Jack replied, and they both began laughing again.  
  
“Actually,” Rose said, when she caught her breath, “the one I heard was, ‘Cos sheep can hear a zipper at five hundred yards . . .’”  
  
The Doctor, giving up, went stomping off down the corridor, radiating prickly annoyance as he went -- which only made the two humans laugh harder.  
  
Wiping his eyes, Jack rolled over and scribbled “no kilts” on his clipboard. “Okay,” he said to Rose, who had just started to get her breath back, “stop me if you’ve heard this one — there are three women walking down the street, and they see a guy in a kilt passed out under a wagon . . .”  



	5. New Day

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Clipboard is somewhat in the background here, but it still plays its part. . . Contains a followup gag to "Adopted."

Mornings. The Doctor liked mornings. A new day, infinite possibilites, all of that. Not that there was much of a visible change in the TARDIS interior to separate one day from the next, but these things were all rather relative, anyway. Morning was when he said it was. Time Lord's perogative.  
  
The Doctor began going through his daily round of equipment and readout checks, humming under his breath (since it would be undignified to hum out loud), wondering what sort of day this was going to be.  
  
Rose had followed him to the control room, and was perched on the edge of the catwalk, playing with his old yo-yo -- she'd found it while rummaging in a drawer, and brightened immediately.  
  
"Used to be pretty good with one of these things -- lessee what I remember," she commented.  
  
She was really doing quite well, the Doctor decided, watching from the corner of his eye while the rest of his attention was devoted to the diagnostic screens flicking past at eyeblink speed. Being a Time Lord, he could multitask quite nicely. Maybe today he'd take Rose somewhere low-grav and show her a few of the more elaborate tricks one could manage when a yo-yo's speed was drastically slower than normal . . .  
  
Out of the corner of his other eye, he saw Jack enter the control room, with that blasted clipboard in hand and a thick book from the Library clamped in his armpit.  
  
Sighing, the Doctor finished with the equipment checks, and prepared to pay partial attention to Jack while mentally plotting out courses to promising yo-yo venues.  
  
"Just to check," Jack said, starting in without any kind of introduction -- everyone knew what The Clipboard meant by now -- "how do you guys feel about Jell-O wrestling?"  
  
Neither the Doctor nor Rose (engrossed in the TARDIS controls and the yo-yo, respoectively) even bothered to respond verbally to that one, but Jack got the message loud and clear through the link.  
  
"Right," he said, marking an X on his sheet of paper, and making a note in the margin. "Next up, a nice place with everything we're looking for, but I'm guessing the wedding tokens are gonna nuke it."  
  
Rose looked up, catching the yo-yo and stilling it. "Tokens? Y' mean like wedding rings? What could be that bad?" She was genuinely curious.  
  
"Elaborate facial tattoos," Jack told her. "It's interesting, actually -- the whole thing takes three days, and there's a different part of the ceremony read off each day, one for each color that's applied to the tattoo while all the witnesses watch . . ."  
  
Another pulse down the link. ". . . Gotcha." Another X, another scribble in the margin. "Y'know, by the time we get this figured out, I'll have enough research notes to write a monograph on comparative wedding customs . . . Anyway, what're the plans for today?"  
  
The Doctor had just opened his mouth to mention yo-yos when he was stalled by a burst of jaunty electronic music.  
  
"Hold on," Rose said. "Mum's on the mobile." She pulled the Superphone from her pocket and flipped it open.  
  
"Hi, Mum . . . Oh, nothin' much, just playin' around with the Doctor's yo-yo . . . _Mum!_ That was rude! I meant a _real_ yo-yo. No, I'm not coverin' up any life-threatening adventures, either. It's all nice and quiet . . ." A pause. "Really?" Rose had been swinging her feet and looking down at her socks while she spoke (she hadn't bothered with shoes yet), but now she looked up with a speculative expression on her face, considering the Doctor.  
  
"Well, I dunno, Mum -- why don't I hand you over and you can ask him yourself?" Rose dropped off the edge of the catwalk, landing gracefully, and padded over to the Doctor. She extended the mobile to him, and he eyed it suspiciously.  
  
"What does _she_ want?" he asked.  
  
"She's got a question about her computer," Rose told him, her lips quirking as if she was suppressing a smile.  
  
"What? It should be running fine, unless . . . don't tell me, she let the Idiot get hold of it after we left, let him change it 'round? Cos' it's not _my_ fault if it's stopped workin' from somethin' like that. . ."  
  
Rose couldn't suppress her grin anymore. "No, s' workin' fine -- but Mum wants to know why her home page keeps comin' up as YahooMars."  
  
" . . . Ah." Reluctantly, the Doctor reached for the phone. Sadly, he probably couldn't blame Mickey and get away with it, this time . . .  
  
"Are we going to Jackie's?" Jack asked from the jumpseat, where he'd settled with his clipboard and book. He already had the latter open, and was taking notes on the former with his stylus. "That'd be great -- I could get in some more research time while you take care of that . . ."  
  
"An' I could round up some washing!" Rose said, cheerfully, heading off to presumably do just that.  
  
The Doctor sighed as he raised the phone to his ear, visions of an irresponsible, yo-yo-filled day evaporating. Now he knew what kind of day it would be.  
  
A long one.


	6. Adrenaline Rush

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Jack is bored -- can the Clipboard help him out?

Jack nibbled on a grass stem and sighed.  
  
The grass here had an interesting tangy-spicy flavor, but he still took it as a bad sign that he’d been reduced to chewing on the local foliage for kicks. It had been nearly three days since he’d had a decent adrenaline rush, and Captain Jack Harkness was getting . . . antsy.  
  
Rose and the Doctor sure didn’t seem to be sharing his boredom. They were sprawled out on the grass, the Doctor’s leather coat spread out under their heads. Rose was shading her eyes, still holding the bouquet of wildflowers she’d picked. The Doctor was thoroughly relaxed — not a common thing for him, his now-long hair pooled around him.  
  
They looked gorgeous together, but gorgeous was not where Jack’s headspace was at just then. He could have been sacked out next to them, but instead he was standing up with his thumbs hooked into his jeans pockets, bouncing a little on the balls of his feet while he chewed his grass stem.  
  
The park where they were currently enjoying a lovely summer day was almost empty and nearly silent, so Jack’s second, louder sigh was clearly audible to his two companions. Rose chose to ignore it, he could tell by the faint ripple of laziness coming down her portion of the link, but the Doctor sighed in return.  
  
“What’s wrong with you, then?” he said, not even bothering to open his eyes.  
  
“I’m bored.”  
  
“Well, y’ could always hike back to the TARDIS and get y’r clipboard.” The Doctor had lately started to tweak Jack gently about his growing obsession with wedding customs.  
  
Actually, Jack had been thinking the same thing — if nothing else he could doodle in the margins or something. No luck on possible ceremonies to publicly cement their three-way union — the only things he’d found lately were out because . . .  
  
Hm.  
  
“Nah,” Jack said, casually, starting to grin. He reached up and pulled the grass stem from his mouth and twirled it between his fingertips. “I’m a little frustrated with that, right now. Not having much luck. Although . . .” he trailed off and let the unfinished sentence hang there.  
  
A slight spark of interest from Rose, though not enough to get her to move, or speak.  
  
“Yeah?” the Doctor prompted, taking the bait beautifully.  
  
“Well, there was this one possibility. The Hla-hari ceremony’s set for three people, it might work . . .”  
  
“No, it wouldn’t,” the Doctor told him unexpectedly. “They’ve got three genders — male, female, and neuter. Any wedding they’d have would need one of each.”  
  
Oh, even better. He loved it when people helped him out like this.  
  
“Well, yeah, but I bet we could fake it,” Jack replied, beginning to grin more broadly. He could feel his heartbeat picking up in anticipation.  
  
The Doctor, sensing something was up, finally deigned to crack open one eyelid and give Jack a suspicious-sardonic glance. “Wouldn’t work if they didn’t think one of us was sexless. Don’t see that happening.”  
  
“Oh, I dunno,” Jack told him, with a wink, flicking his grass stem away to the side and moving his weight to the balls of his feet. “You do a pretty good eunuch imitation. You sure had me fooled for the first couple of months . . .”  
  
The Doctor opened his other eye, and gave Jack the benefit of a double-barreled Oncoming Storm glare. Rose snorted.  
  
“I bet we could get Jackie to testify, as a witnessing relative, that you’re, ah, genitally-challenged. I don’t think she’d have _any_ objections to getting up in front of everyone and saying so. In fact, why don’t I float that by her next time we visit . . .?”  
  
The Doctor gave almost no warning before he lunged to his feet, but Jack’s reactions were on a hair trigger from anticipation, and he bolted half a second before the Doctor could grab him.  
  
As he took off at full speed, Jack could hear the Doctor roaring, “I’ll give _you_ ‘genitally-challenged,’ Jack Harkness!” over the sound of Rose’s laughter.  
  
Jack lengthened his stride, grinning like a madman from the adrenalin rush. He hadn’t a hope in hell of outrunning an entity with a fully-fledged binary vascular system . . .  
  
. . . but he bet he could give the Doctor a run for his money.  



	7. Never doing That Again

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Blame taffimai and honorh over on LiveJournal. Their comments on "Second Gifts" sent the crack bunnies calling, and this is the result. I feel no compunctions whatsoever about stealing some of their proposed lines almost verbatim, in retaliation.

Jack stood naked in front of the bedroom's full-length mirror, mentally cursing a blue streak. It wasn’t so obvious from the front but . . . when he turned sideways there was a small but very distinctive _bump_ beginning to pooch out just below his navel.  
  
No wonder his appetite had been dodgy in the mornings and he’d been suffering from overly-sensitive nipples. Even without a trip the medbay, Jack knew what the problem was now.  
  
He turned to glare over his shoulder at the Doctor, who was leaning against the wall, arms crossed, watching Jack with dry amusement.  
  
“You bastard,” Jack told him, “you knocked me up! Before our wedding!”  
  
“Looks like,” the Doctor responded laconically.  
  
“ _How?!?!_  
  
The Doctor rolled his eyes. “Never figured I’d have to give _you_ this talk. All right: when a Time Lord and a former conman love each other very much, they get certain urges . . .”  
  
Jack dug the fingers of one hand in his hair to keep his brain from exploding outward, and snarled, “That’s not what I meant! My uterine implant is entirely closed to the outside. How did anything get _in_?”  
  
“Last of my kind, me,” the Doctor said with a shrug. “Must’ve made my sperm extra-determined.”  
  
Before Jack could even begin to formulate a response to that, Rose, sitting cross-legged on the bed interjected glumly, “My mum is going to have a fit. She might even go round up a shotgun.”  
  
“Really?” That gave Jack pause. He had to admit, if there was going to be a silver lining in all of this, Jackie Tyler using the barrel of a shotgun to prod a glowering Doctor into making an honest man of Jack would make a hell of an entertaining picture . . .  
  
A new and horrible thought struck Jack. “Pictures,” he groaned, his other hand joining the first at the task of keeping his head in one piece. “There’ll be all kinds of pictures taken.”  
  
He spun back to the mirror, appalled. At the rate this kid was growing, he’d have a prize potbelly in no time at all.  
  
He spun back to face his fiancés. “That’s it!” he declared. “I’ve researched at least fifty different wedding ceremonies, and you two have nixed every last one of them. But we are _going_ to get married, now, before I really start showing. Goats, kilts, goats _in_ kilts, whatever, I don’t care! I refuse to look fat in my wedding pictures.” He glowered with what he hoped was irresistible force at Rose and the Doctor.  
  
“Relax, Captain,” the Doctor said, pushing off from the wall and looking smug (the bastard — probably proud of his superhuman fertility). “I’ll rig you up a dimensionally transcendent set of trousers. Time Lord technology, bigger on the inside . . .”  
  
“Jack,” Rose interrupted, sounding surprisingly distant for someone sitting just a few feet away on the bed. The Doctor was still talking, but Jack couldn’t make out what he was saying . . . “Jack! _Jack_!”  
  
“Unh?” With a startled grunt, Jack rolled over and woke up. He blinked stupidly up at Rose for a moment, trying to figure out how he’d ended up lying in bed when he’d been standing up a moment before.  
  
“Finally!” Rose sat back a little. “You were havin’ some kind of nightmare, woke us both up groanin’ around.”  
  
The mattress rippled slightly as the Doctor, lying on the other side of Rose, sat up. “Told you not to mix three hypervodka tonics with two pints of Andovarian herbal ale last night. That combination’s almost guaranteed to give anyone a bad reaction.” He snorted. “So much for, ‘I used to be a Time Agent, I know how to drink, thanks.’”  
  
Ah, yes. Jack did remember saying something of the sort, vaguely. Very vaguely. He realized his head was faintly sore, and he was very thirsty. Maybe if he was lucky and downed some water right now, he could avoid part of of the hangover he felt creeping up on him. He groaned and rolled out of the bed. He even managed to land on his feet.  
  
“You okay?” Rose asked, starting to give off a sense of genuine concern. “You weren’t making any sense — goin’ on about dimensionally transcendent trousers or something.”  
  
“Uh.” Jack wove a little before finding his balance, even though the room still seemed to be tilting slightly to the side. “I . . . don’t really remember what I was dreaming about.” If the others — especially the Doctor — ever found out he’d _never_ hear the end of it. Not for the first time, Jack found himself grateful that empathy did not involve transmission of images . . . or dreams. “God, I need some water. I’ll be right back.”  
  
As he stumbled towards the bathroom door, he rubbed his face and groaned.  
  
“I am never,” he said confidently, “doing that again.”  



	8. Academically Speaking

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Written as a [Support Stacie auction](http://www.majiksfanfic.com/phpbb/viewforum.php?f=101&sid=4b35249b41de2ded94c3e16174a8edad) incentive fic for lgrace61, who asked for a Bliss or Flowers snippet; this sprang to mind, so she gets a Clipboard update. :D Many thanks for the generous bid!

The Time Rotor stopped with a _clunk_ , followed by a moment’s silence and then a low musical _ping_.  
  
The Doctor glanced down at his portion of the control panel while he ran through the quick post-flight checks. Rose and Jack were doing the same at their posts. “Email f’r you, Captain,” the Doctor said, absently.  
  
Jack’s interest sparked with bright hope as he accessed the all-times-and-places-inbox from his panel. “Hah!” he said with delight as he scanned the message. “Yes! At last!”  
  
Rose looked up. “A new wedding prospect?” she asked, with curiosity.  
  
“Not quite. But my monograph on comparative wedding practices in the central galactic regions of the Milky Way just got accepted for publication in the _Journal of Xenocultural Anthropology,_ forty-seventh century edition.” he responded with a sly smile. “At this rate, I’ll have an honorary doctorate by the time we get married. You’ll be saying ‘yes’ to the Doctor _and_ the Doctor, then.”  
  
The Doctor shot him a steel-blue glare from under lowered brows. “In your dreams, Captain. Solo act, me.”  
  
Rose raised an eyebrow and sent a wry, warning pulse of color down the link. “In a manner of speakin’, yeah?”  
  
The Doctor exchanged a glance with Jack. ( _Not touching this/your move/good luck!_ ) was the wickedly cheerful response from the human.  
  
“In an _academic_ manner of speakin’. Now, we’ve got a whole new world that won’t explore itself, you two comin’?”  
  
“Four out of five for extemporizing,” Rose told him, suppressing a smile. “I’ll let you live, this time.” She skipped around the column to take the Doctor’s arm. “Let’s go!”  
  
Jack laughed all the way down the ramp.  



End file.
